A Social Psychological Guide for Transformation into Low Carbon Living

This chapter introduces a social psychological framework for understanding the complexity of behaviour and behaviour change, with a specific focus on low carbon behaviours. We consider how personal motivations and abilities, social relationships and contextual factors contribute to people’s low carbon practices in the household, ranging from household temperature curtailment to the purchase of energy efficient white goods and solar panels. We also provide notes for practitioners to use in the development and evaluation of policies and interventions for low carbon living. Finally, we provide an illustrative selection of findings from national surveys and interviews examining Australian residents’ engagement in low carbon behaviours.